Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies - Volume VI

Schmidt Number: S-5747

On-line since: 31st August, 2011

VI

Stuttgart,
1st June, 1924

On the
last occasion, during our Waldorf School Conference, I spoke to
you about karmic connections in the evolution of humanity, and to-day
I want to say something more on the same subject. I shall begin with
matters of which you already have some knowledge and then pass on to
others less familiar to you.

When the
human being passes through the gate of death, his ether-body
dissolves away into the Cosmos when the physical body has been laid
aside at the moment of death itself. To-day we shall not be studying
this first stage after death, when the ether-body is dissolving, but
the stage which follows. This can best be understood by thinking, to
begin with, of the earthly life between birth and death. This earthly
life runs its course in two sharply different conditions: waking and
sleeping. You know from Anthroposophy that during the waking state
the four members — physical body, ether-body, astral body
and Ego — interpenetrate, mutually stimulating and sustaining
their several functions. But in sleep the physical body and etheric
body remain in the bed, leading temporarily a plant-like existence,
while the astral body and Ego-organisation live independently in the
spiritual world, separated from the physical and etheric
bodies. We know from ordinary experience that when we are
recollecting our earthly life, our remembrances are falsified
in a certain sense. For when we look back with ordinary
consciousness over our life, this retrospect seems to be a
continuous, onward flowing stream, one event proceeding from
another consecutively, and as a rule we ignore the fact that the
stream of our memories is continually interrupted by the nights. In
remembrance, therefore, there is a sequence of day-night-day-night; a
period of clear consciousness passes over into one of darkness and
this again into one of light. With the exception of dreams which
arise from sleep, the part of earthly life which is spent in sleep
remains, for the most part, unconscious. Generally speaking, this
constitutes a third of the earthly life — if a man is not an
abnormally long sleeper. Even taking into consideration the many more
hours a child spends in sleep, it will be found that sleep occupies
about a third of the time of life on the Earth.

We may
ask: What are the Ego-organisation and astral body doing during the
period of sleep? They are, it is true, in the spiritual
world. But they have no awareness in that world and with the
exception of dreams they remain unconscious. Moreover if the
human being — constituted as he is on Earth with his ordinary
consciousness — were always to have awareness during sleep he
would go astray in one direction or another. A man of a more
Ahrimanic disposition would go about during the day as if in a
swoon, as if his consciousness had suffered a kind of paralysis; a
man of a more Luciferic disposition would go about in a state of
confused consciousness, with his thoughts and feelings in a perpetual
jumble. Generally speaking, the human being is protected by the power
known as the “Guardian of the Threshold” from becoming
aware of the spiritual world around him during sleep.

When a man
has passed through the gate of death, however, and after the first
few days has laid aside the etheric body, he starts an existence
which flows backwards, beginning with the day of death, passing then
to the day before that, and so on through the whole of his life, in
the direction from death to birth. But he lives backwards through
the nights — the periods of sleep — not through the
days. Hence the time during which his life is lived through in this
backward order amounts to about one third of the span of his earthly
life. If a man dies at the age of sixty, this backward
‘journey’ lasts about twenty years, that is to say, this
other life is passed through three times as quickly as the life on
Earth. Between death and a new birth we review the nights during
which — unconsciously of course — pictures were produced
which are in a sense negative images of the earthly life.

If man
were not protected by the Guardian of the Threshold his
experiences every night would be unendurable and bring about the
consequences to which I have referred. If, for instance, he had done
someone a wrong, he would feel during sleep as if he were transposed
into the other man, experiencing what this other man had felt as a
result of the wrong done to him. For the reason given there is no
such experience during sleep. But after death, during the period
referred to, it comes with very great intensity. We live backwards
through our earthly life and through all the compensatory experiences
for what we have done or failed to do. How comes it that we are able
to live through these compensatory experiences?

In order
to answer this question, attention must be called to a cosmic event.
During the course of the Earth's evolution, the
Moon — which was originally part of the Earth
— separated and emerged from the Earth to lead an independent
physical existence. Some time after the physical substances of the
Moon separated from the Earth, the ancient primeval Teachers of
humanity departed to the Moon. While they were on the Earth, these
primeval Teachers had not incarnated in physical bodies, but only in
etheric bodies. Hence the nature of their influence upon human beings
was imaginative, inspirational. And all the wonderful teachings which
were given in a more poetic form and contained in legends and sagas,
originated in a majestic, primeval wisdom imparted by these ancient
Teachers on the Earth. But the essential nature of these Teachers enabled
them to withdraw to the Moon which has since been their habitation.

When the
human being passes through the gate of death, he moves in very truth
through the Cosmos; his being expands and expands. He passes first
into the Moon sphere and encounters these great primeval Teachers as
they now are. They preserve as it were a naively instinctive,
innocent state of the human race. Before men succumbed to the
possibility of doing evil, these primeval Teachers were present
on the Earth. They take into themselves what is inscribed by us
into the Akashic Chronicle during the nights we live through during
our existence on Earth. They permeate it with their own being
and thus make it possible for us, during the first third of our life
after death when we are living through the events of earthly
existence in backward order, to experience it all with greater
intensity than we experienced it on Earth. Events in earthly life
jolt us, impel and drive us, but those whose spiritual vision is able
to witness what a dead man lives through in these first decades after
his death know well that through the magical power of the great
Teachers who have established their colony on the Moon, the
experiences of yonder life have an intensity infinitely greater and
more vivid than those of earthly life. We actually undergo all this.
Suppose you once gave someone a box on the ears: after death you do
not experience the feeling of satisfaction or perhaps of anger
or malice occasioned in you by your action, but you are
then within
the other man, you experience the pain and the
shock that were caused to him. You feel exactly what your action made
him feel. The experience of living through such events with a dead
man is deeply moving — one cannot say ‘shattering.’

Let me
give you an example here. Most of you will remember that among the
characters in my Mystery Plays, I have depicted that of Strader. As
in the case of most of the characters in the Plays, the figure of
Strader is drawn from actual life. There was a man whose life was
almost exactly similar to that of Strader as depicted in the Plays.
You can well imagine that I was very much interested in this
personality during his physical life on Earth. He died in the
year 1912, and my interest in his experiences after death began from
then onwards. He had ultimately become a writer on the subject of
rationalistic theology, and everything he had experienced on the
Earth became infinitely more intense as he himself was experiencing
the effect of his books and his rationalism. After I had shared for
some time in what he was experiencing, I found it impossible to
continue the character of Strader in the Plays and he dies because my
interest in his earthly life was no longer there; it was eliminated
by the intensity of interest in what he was experiencing after death.

An
incident connected with
this was that certain friends interested themselves
in the writings left by the original of Strader and wanted to bring
them to me. I simply could not take any interest in the matter and
had to ignore it, for the simple reason that interest in the dead is
so much stronger and eliminates everything else. By this I merely
want to indicate that the experiences of a man after death while
living through his life in backward order are much more intense than
they were during his earthly existence. Earthly life is almost like a
dream as compared with this other experience. It is an experience in
negative, an experience of the consequences in the other person of
what we have done and left undone. Hence it should not be described
as altogether terrible. But at any rate a man must come to realise which
of his deeds, his thoughts, his feelings, were just and which were not.

You can
imagine that it is in this state of existence that the first seed of
karma is formed. For when the human being realises what actually
happens between death and a new birth, his judgement differs from
judgement as it is on
Earth. — I may already have mentioned that many
years ago I met a lady who had listened to a conversation that had
taken place in her presence on the subject of repeated earthly lives.
She said that one life was enough for her, that she had no desire at
all for any others, and she protested vehemently against the
possibility of having to return again and again. I was obliged to say
to her at the time: ‘Yes, it may be that this is your opinion
here on Earth; but that is not the point. What matters is the
judgement that is made between death and a new birth.’ As long
as she was with us, she realised this, but on her travels afterwards
she sent me a postcard saying that after all she did not admit that
there are many earthly lives!

When the
human being is undergoing these intensified experiences after death,
he makes a resolve that may be expressed as follows: Owing to this
and that, you have become imperfect, you are an inferior human being;
and you must make compensation! Thereby the plan of karma is laid
down. And such resolutions in the spiritual world between death and a
new birth are realities. Just as here on Earth it is a reality
that you burn yourself if you put your finger into a flame, so it is
a reality in the spiritual world when you form a resolution. And you
do most assuredly form it!

All these
experiences are lived through in the Moon sphere. Passing through the
following spheres of Mercury and Venus, man gradually approaches the
Sun sphere. The Mercury sphere and the Venus sphere form the
transition into the Sun sphere. But entry into the Sun sphere would
not be possible if the whole burden of the evil laid upon the soul in
the Moon sphere had still to be taken in tow. The Cosmos therefore
provides that when the human being leaves the Moon sphere, the evil
in him stays behind; it waits until he returns and is again passing
through the Moon sphere. But as the human being is one with his
deeds, he leaves much of himself behind. If I have done evil on the
Earth, this simply makes me an inferior being; in passing through the
Moon sphere I lose part of myself, leave it behind. A man who had
been an out-and-out villain, who had never once done anything
good — but after all, nobody like this really
exists — such a man would be left behind in his entirety in the
Moon sphere. But, as I say, nobody like this exists ... human beings
do make progress.

With less
or more qualities or defects, the human being passes, at first, into
the Mercury sphere. Here too, between death and a new birth, he
undergoes particular experiences which are a preparation for his
existence in the Sun sphere. In physical life on Earth, a man becomes
ill in one way or another. In soul and spirit he must be completely
healthy when he passes into the Sun sphere. Hence in the Mercury
sphere the human being is freed from all the effects that illnesses
have produced upon the soul. Therefore it is the case that true
medicine can only be mastered when one is able to perceive how the
dead are freed from illnesses in the Mercury sphere. This can teach
us what must be done for human beings on the Earth to free them from
illnesses. And so, in the times of the Mysteries and of instinctive
clairvoyance, medicine was regarded as a revelation from the
Mercury sphere through the Mysteries. Just think: What is a God
to modern man? A God is a Being who can never be seen on the Earth.
This was not so in the days of instinctive clairvoyance. Mercury had
his Mysteries. As you can read in the book,
Occult Science,
there were Mercury Mysteries. Indeed the
Arch-High-Priest of the Mercury Mysteries was Mercury himself. This
was brought about through a man being born whose spirit was then
released by a super-human process in order to seek embodiment in
another way. The body was there, and this body was used by the God
Mercury in order to come to the Earth, that is to say, to reveal
himself in the Mysteries. The Gods themselves were the teachers in
the ancient Mysteries. The same applies to all the Gods of Greece;
they were all on the Earth in this sense. The God Mercury taught men
the art of medicine of which Hippocrates, later on, still preserved a
tradition.

Then the
human being enters into the Venus sphere where he becomes wholly
aware of his incompleteness. But in the Venus sphere all that is
incomplete in him is prepared for the Sun existence in which the
longest period is spent. Man lives twice through the Sun sphere, but
we need now speak only of the one period. He spends the longest
period in the Sun existence where, to begin with, he is in the
company of those souls with whom he has some kind of karmic
connection and who are now, like himself, in the spiritual world. But
he is also in the company of the Beings of the higher
Hierarchies: Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis,
Kyriotetes, and so on. What happens here? Inasmuch as the human being
is fully conscious of his incompleteness, he works together with the
Beings of the higher Hierarchies at the model and prototype of his
next Earth existence. During the first half of the Sun existence he
works more at the prototype of his future physical corporeality,
and during the second half more at the prototype of his moral nature
as it will be in his next Earth existence.
This work that proceeds during the Sun existence is by no means as
uniform as it seems when one has to describe it, but it is infinitely
richer, more splendid and more mighty than anything that a man can
experience on the Earth. On the Earth, man does not experience what
is actually enclosed within his skin, but what is around him. During
the Sun existence it is the exact opposite, for then man experiences
everything that is within the Cosmos. Just as here on Earth we say:
this is my stomach, so in yonder sphere we say: out there is my
Venus. And as we say here: this is my heart, over yonder, we say:
this is my Sun. The Beings of the universe become our organs. We
ourselves are as the universe. While man is on Earth — I refer
of course to a spiritual conception of man — he is merely
filled by earthly substance. This inner world of the human being is
in very truth more all-embracing, more splendid than the Cosmos
outside man on the Earth. On the Earth, man is not conscious of all
that is concealed within his being. But it is much greater, much more
majestic than anything he sees on Earth. And what thus lies concealed
within him, is revealed to him during the Sun existence. Out of what
is then his world, he forms and shapes his physical and moral nature
for his next life on Earth. He also works at his karma. After having
learnt during the first decades after death how he has to work, he
proceeds to labour at his karma. The final touch, as it were, is not
given until the evil he has done is encountered again during the second
passage through the Moon sphere, and to the model and prototype is added
the force which impels him into the karma of a new earthly life.

In order
to have more precise insight into how karma is formed, we must think
of the following. — Stars — what are they, in
reality? Scientists speak of the stars as if they were orbs of
burning gas or the like. It is by no means so! Suppose you were on
the planet Venus. The Earth would then appear to you more or less as
Venus appears to you now, and you would describe the Earth as you now
describe Venus; you would estimate that on the Earth
— which is the theatre of man's existence — there are so
and so many souls. But wherever a star shines, there are souls! There
are souls on the Moon: the souls of the great primeval Teachers,
intermingled in a sense with the souls of the Angeloi. On Mercury
there are the souls of the Archangeloi, among whom we live when we
pass through the sphere of the Archangeloi. The God Mercury is an
Archangelic Being. On Venus are the Archai. And upon the Sun are the
Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, in whose company man forms his karma.
We must see in the shining stars the outer signs of colonies of
Spirits in the Cosmos. Wherever a star is seen in the heavens, there
— in that direction — is a colony of Spirits.

When the
human being has lived through the Sun existence, he enters into
the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. He has
already, in the Sun sphere, begun to work at his karma. But as well
as this — in order that he shall find the load
of evil that belongs to him when, later on, he goes back through the
Moon sphere, and in order that karma may be prepared in such a way
that it can be fulfilled on Earth — he needs to live with the
Spirits indwelling Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Moreover when highly
characteristic human destinies are being worked out, it is the case
that the final stage of the development of karmic connections takes
place in the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere or the Saturn sphere.
Karma can, of course, be worked out when the human being comes again
into the Venus sphere, and also into the Mercury sphere. Between
death and a new birth man works at his karma, together with the
Beings of the planetary systems. And it is exceedingly interesting to
investigate this.

Today the
time has come to speak more openly, with greater freedom and
frankness, of many spiritual facts. The Christmas Foundation Meeting
at the Goetheanum was held in order to introduce this esoteric
character which should now imbue the whole Anthroposophical Society.
Therefore, when I was able to speak to you on the last occasion, I
began to explain all kinds of karmic connections. Let it not be
thought that one is delving with clumsy fingers into the life of man
when attempts are made to speak of interesting human phenomena from
the point of view of their karmic connections. For thereby the world
becomes for the first time transparent, full of light —
not poorer but richer, more splendid in content.

I should
like to speak today about an individual who was incarnated about the
second century A.D. in Rome,
as it then was, and who with great sensitiveness of perception had
witnessed the willing martyrdom suffered by the Christians in their
efforts to promulgate their cause in the Roman Empire. This
individual had also witnessed the terrible injustices and the
many forms of depravity and corruption which were so rife in the
Roman Empire at that time. Numberless manifestations of Good and Evil
were witnessed and experienced by this individual. With the methods
of spiritual research which enable such happenings to be
recognised, we find this individual drawn into the tumultuous
happenings which at that time, during the second half of the second
century A.D., were
experienced in the Roman Empire in connection with the spread of
Christianity. There is something extremely moving about this
individual when the eye of spirit is directed upon him in the way I
explained last time with reference to other individuals in their
repeated earthly lives.

In this
individual who lived to a very great age and who had witnessed so
much Good in deeds of supreme sacrifice in the sphere of germinating
Christianity, and so much that was evil and bad in Roman life at that
time, there arose a kind of realisation which was also a question:
Where is the balance, the mean? Is there only the wholly Good and the
wholly Evil in the world?

With the
consciousness of Imagination and Inspiration one can follow quite
clearly how this individual was subsequently reborn in the
eleventh century, as a woman. The experiences undergone in the life
as a woman levelled out the hard, steel-like angularity of soul which
had developed during the Roman incarnation when he had reached a
great age. This trait was softened and mellowed and became a faculty
of inner, thoughtful contemplation of Good and Evil. This individual
then came again to the Earth in the eighteenth century and was born
as the German poet, Friedrich Schiller.

And now
study Schiller's life and see how it develops, striving to find a
middle condition, a balance, a mean. Schiller needed Goethe before he
could get rid of all that had remained in him from the conviction
that there is only Good, there is only Evil. Read Schiller's dramas,
and you will understand them if you think of his earlier incarnation.

What
circumstances lie behind Schiller's life and outlook? The experiences
he had undergone in the Roman incarnation continued to be alive
within him, but he had subsequently incarnated as a woman in the
Middle Ages. And then, in his life between death and a new birth, it
was in the Saturn sphere that the most significant development of his
karma took place.

Initiation-knowledge, of the degree that can be attained only
in advanced age, is necessary in order to understand the essential
nature of the Saturn sphere. The question may be asked: How is it
possible to acquire knowledge of life on the stars and the like? I
have told you that when the human being reaches Imaginative
consciousness, he beholds his whole life in a great tableau. But he
also beholds it divided into epochs. When Inspiration is attained,
and the emptied consciousness wipes out this tableau, something
shines out of every such epoch. Instead of beholding his own life
between birth and the seventh year, a man beholds, at this place in
the life-tableau, the happenings of the Moon
existence — he can look into these happenings. In
the tableau of the second epoch which lies between the change of
teeth and puberty, the Mercury existence shines through all the
happenings. The events of the school period, seen as they are
backwards in this tableau, lead into the Mercury existence. How aptly
and truly were the functions assigned to the several planets in the
days of instinctive wisdom on the Earth! Statistics reveal that the
human being is most healthy, not in the years between birth and the
change of teeth, nor after puberty, but during the school period as
it is called (between the ages of seven and fourteen), because that
is the time when Mercury works most strongly into the human being in
his Earth existence. In the tableau arising from the epoch stretching
between puberty and about the twenty-first or twenty-second years,
the processes and Beings belonging to Venus are seen. Again it was
genius that ascribed to Venus the initial stages of the sex life. The
Sun existence shines through the epoch lying between the ages of
twenty-one and forty-two, the Mars existence through the epoch lying
between the years forty-two and forty-nine; the Jupiter existence
through the epoch from forty-nine to fifty-six; and the Saturn
existence through the epoch from fifty-six to sixty-three. Truth to
tell, even an Initiate cannot see the circumstances of life between
death and a new birth in which Saturn plays a part, until he has
passed the sixty-third year of his life. Before then it is possible
to learn about this existence in many different ways; but in actual
vision it is possible to behold these happenings and their
connections only when one has passed the sixty-third year of life. So
you will realise why it is that I am only now speaking of matters
connected with the Saturn existence.

As I said,
Schiller developed his karma above all in the sphere of Saturn. To
behold this Saturn existence in the way I have indicated, causes
great amazement, because it is so different from anything one can
experience on the Earth. In the consciousness of the Beings on Saturn
there is only Past; there is no Present at all. But the Past is
revealed in great majesty. Let me try to make a comparison with
something that might happen on the Earth — it
does not happen, but hypothetically it is possible.
Imagine that you have no idea what you look like, you know only that
you exist. You act, you do something — you do not see this at
the time, you see it only when it has become the Past. You walk: you
do not see your own steps or the movements you make; but
immediately afterwards these movements change into a
snowman — and you draw the whole movement after you when
you look round and see what you have been doing! Such is the life of
these strange Spirits upon Saturn. They are never aware of what they
do out of an immediate resolve of the Present, but they perceive it
only when it has become the Past. This is a difficult conception for
the ordinary consciousness, but it is so nevertheless.
Individualities like that of Schiller, who are also forming their
karma, live in similar conditions of existence. Such individuals
develop a wonderful vision of the Past. And so the soul of
Schiller, before he was born in the year 1790, lived in the spiritual
world with a majestic vision in retrospect of all the Past that was
connected with his own karma. And then, on the Earth, this
changed into the reaction: the vision of the Past is now transformed
into enthusiasm for ideals of the Future. Schiller's ideals of the
Future arose from his activity in connection with his karma
during his Saturn existence.

And now
let us take another life. During an incarnation in Greece, a certain
individual had had a great deal to do with Greek plastic art and also
with the Platonic philosophy. As a young man he was filled with
enthusiasm for plastic art which he was able to view with the eye of
spirit, and his colossal artistic powers were able to translate into
art what he perceived spiritually. After other incarnations had been
lived through, we find this individuality developing his karma in the
Jupiter sphere. The Jupiter Beings differ from the Saturn Beings. The
Jupiter Beings are unlike the men of Earth. When a man of Earth wants
to grow wise, he must undergo inner development, he must struggle,
battle inwardly and overcome; through periods that are filled with
active development the human being on Earth struggles to acquire an
unpretentious form of wisdom. Not so the Jupiter Beings. They are
not ‘born’ as earthly beings are born,
they form themselves out of the Cosmos. Just as you can see a cloud
taking shape, so do the Jupiter Beings form themselves in the etheric
and astral worlds, out of the Cosmos. Neither do they die. They
interpenetrate one another, do not, as it were compete with each
other for space. These Beings are, so to speak, wisdom that has
become real and actual. Wisdom is innate in them; they cannot be other
than wise. Just as we have circulating blood, so have the Jupiter
Beings wisdom. It is their very nature. Among them too, karma can be
shaped. The individuality of whom we are speaking, who lived through
one of his most important earthly lives in ancient Greece, passed
through the Jupiter sphere, came into contact with the wisdom of the
Jupiter sphere where his karma was shaped, and was born again in the
eighteenth century as Goethe. Such is the origin of the wonderful
combination of Greek culture and wisdom that is present in Goethe.

When
history is studied in this way, when we try to glean from the
Mysteries and from secrets of the Cosmos what is happening on the
Earth, I do not think that the Earth's history loses significance
thereby. Prosaic professors may always be insisting that it is much
more to the point to depict Goethe as the man he actually was in
life, than to waft him away into a higher sphere! In richer epochs of
evolution, when instinctive clairvoyance still survived, men spoke,
openly as well, of how life in the heavens is revealed through human
acts and human existence. In this respect we must get away from that
abstract mentality which makes us think we are mere worms looking
upwards from the Earth, believing only what the astronomers and
astro-physicists have to say about the stars. In our civilisation and
culture, with all their heavy trials, it is urgently necessary to
understand the battle that is being waged between men who
strive for the Spirit in order to comprehend spiritual law in the
Cosmos, and men who have no desire for such knowledge, who limit
themselves to the Earth, not only in the sphere of natural science
but also in what is called
‘cultural’ or
‘spiritual’ history at the universities where documents
alone are studied — for documents too are records only of
happenings in the physical, material world. A decision will
most certainly have to be taken in the course of Earth-evolution.
Either degeneration of the spiritual life will intensify, and an
illness of which I have been speaking for years — even in
public lectures — will become more and more widespread.
Very little is said about it as yet in medical literature, but
it will none the less exist in life — its name is
Dementia professoralia (Academic dementia)
— or the human being will have to unfold enthusiasm
for knowledge of the Supersensible. And this will also lead him to
realisation of the connection between the Cosmos and the life of man.

I want to
give you a third and rather more complex example. In an earlier life
on Earth, a certain individuality was incarnated in India, when India
was already in decline, and in that incarnation assimilated much
knowledge of a kind accessible to one with extremely poor physical
sight. Such details must be studied, for, as I have often said, it is
details which lead to perception of the real connections. This
individuality lived through various other incarnations which
were, however, less important than the characteristics developed in
him in India, where his extremely poor sight allowed him to see the
lotus flowers and all the blossoms only with blurred outlines. His
whole vision was clouded, lacking in clarity. His knowledge of life
was of the kind that is inevitable when sight is blurred and the
deeper qualities of things unprobed. The karma of this individuality
was developed in a complicated way. He unfolded in the Mars sphere,
to begin with, qualities that made him into a regular squabbler in
the spiritual world! He also worked a great deal at his karma in the
Mercury sphere, developing qualities of wit, of satire. And, in the
background of all this, picture to yourselves a non-European world.
The individual in question tends to be reborn in Europe. He passes
through the Mars sphere — battle; through the Mercury sphere
— critical, subtle thinking and perception. Having developed
still other characteristic qualities in the Venus sphere — it
is a particularly complex karma — and with the tendency to
evade the physical, while at the same time strongly permeated with
spirituality, this individual in the nineteenth century
becomes Heinrich Heine.

Just try
to realise the understanding that arises of every verse written by
Heine, of the very language, words and form, when we know: this is,
in reality, a product of the Mars sphere, the Venus sphere, the
Mercury sphere. All of it really originates in the Cosmos. Karma is
formed and fashioned in the Cosmos; it is lived out upon Earth.

And so,
looking backwards upon the life-tableau of man, we perceive the Moon
sphere, the Mercury sphere; from the 21st to the 42nd years the Sun
sphere, then the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere.
(I cannot now go into the still later periods; there too one sees
something, but I cannot enter into it now). We see that all these
spheres have something to do with karma. Ordinary consciousness does
not know that man has within him the workings of the Mercury sphere,
Moon sphere, and so on. Yet karma is brought into being by what is
thus within man; he is impelled by these forces to live out his karma
in his own particular way. Heinrich Heine unfolded and developed his
karma in the Venus sphere, the Mercury sphere, the Mars sphere; and
it is these same beings of the Venus sphere, Mercury sphere, Mars
sphere which work through his earthly bodily nature in order to help
him to fulfil his karma. And so, by virtue of his karma, the whole
being of man stands within the Cosmos, gives expression to the Cosmos
here on Earth — in one case in this way, in another in that.

These
things must be studied with a free and wide outlook. When I say to
you that Goethe, in the Jupiter sphere, transformed what he had
absorbed in ancient Greece into deep, instinctive wisdom, which comes
out in all his creations because living beings are at
work — this will have a different result in
another case. At the time when the culture of ancient Mexico had
fallen deeply into decline, though the echoes of the Mysteries and
their cults still persisted, there lived a certain individual. He
came into close contact with the magic arts, the decadent
manifestations of the Mystery epoch in ancient Mexico, and he
understood the sense in which such beings as Quetzalkoatl,
Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl, had been living realities. Orthodox books on
cultural history as a rule mention hardly anything more than
the names of these Beings. Nevertheless there was a time when men had
living conceptions of all these Gods, of Quetzalkoatl,
Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl; they had actual connection with super-sensible
Beings. These matters were understood by the individual to whom I am
referring; and comparatively quickly, without an intermediate
incarnation, he was born again in the nineteenth century as the
occultist Eliphas Lévi, having passed through the Jupiter sphere
in his life between death and a new birth. In ancient Mexico he had been
connected with such things as sorcery, magic arts, and the like, and
had absorbed an outworn, decadent kind of knowledge. A peculiar,
primitive form of wisdom — an inferior wisdom — was in
this case transformed in the Jupiter sphere into the kind of
content we find in the books of Eliphas Lévi. Whereas the Jupiter
sphere produced in Goethe, as the fruit of the earlier incarnation, a
mellow, Olympic fire, and great wisdom, Eliphas Lévi dabbles with a
kind of charlatanism in all sorts of magical formulae and the like.

The
earthly life is, of course, the decisive factor in what the stars are
able to make of our karma. But the stars, that is to say the Beings
who live where the stars indicate their existence, the stars
transform into karma those things which, here on Earth, become
elements in the constitution of karma.

It is in
this way that we shall try more and more to deepen Anthroposophy. And
if a great deal seems paradoxical and
strange — as it certainly will — we must
not mind it. In the paradoxical and the strange lies the truth. Man's
life is based upon foundations that are deeper and more complex than
is usually believed. In order to understand it, our thoughts must not
be fettered to the Earth but take wings out into the expanses of the
Cosmos. On the Earth man gazes at matter and too easily forgets the
Spirit. The opposite is the case as soon as only a little Imaginative
knowledge leads us to the realms of the heavens. There quite
certainly we forget matter and begin gradually to behold the Spirits,
as did the simple Shepherds in an ancient, primitive time, and as was
the case on into the Middle Ages when, instead of inscribing external
signs on maps of the heavens, men drew figures and forms, because
they actually beheld these figures in Imaginative knowledge.

Anthroposophy deepens our inner perceptions too, as I have
repeatedly said. Just think of it! If we make the attempt with the
kind of knowledge I have described, we begin to gaze upon the destiny
of a single human being with holy awe. For what is it that works in
the destiny of each human being? In very truth it is
star-wisdom — all-embracing star-wisdom! Nothing can
enable us to behold the working of the Gods in the universe with
deeper or truer feelings than to behold it in the destiny of a man. A
world-justice flows through Eternity in the existence, the deeds, the
thinking, of the Gods weaving behind the being of man.